1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a transient detection circuit for electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection, and more particularly to a transient detection circuit providing an information signal to an external instrument when an ESD event occurs.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electrostatic discharge (ESD) event has become an important reliability issue for integrated circuits (ICs). To meet component-level ESD reliability, on-chip ESD protection circuits have been added to the I/O cells and power (VDD and VSS) cells of CMOS ICs. Besides component-level ESD stress, a system-level ESD issue is an increasingly significant reliability issue for CMOS IC products. The issues result from strict requirements of reliability test standards, such as system-level ESD test for electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) regulation.